I co-authored a textbook in theology with my friend Mary Potter Engel, Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside. I have never read any better definition of the complex conditions that mutually reinforce one another and create so much harm in our world than what Mary wrote about sin, evil and “wickedness.”

She describes evil as "structures of oppression, patterns larger than individuals and groups, that tempt us toward injustice and impiety.” These are the “isms.” But where do these larger systems, the isms like racism or sexism, come from? Well, they are the product of lots and lots of individual sinning that piles up and creates the systems. Sin, therefore, should be used to describe “those free, discrete acts of responsible individuals that create or reinforce these structures of oppression.”

There’s a “chicken and egg” aspect to this, as individuals can be tempted to commit a sin, let’s say, like a cab driver refusing to pick up an African American man hailing a cab in the rain, because he or she has grown up in a culture where it’s just assumed African American men are always considered a threat. Then the cab driver’s callousness reinforces the stereotype held of white prejudice of the man left on the sidewalk, getting soaking wet. The battered wife who is afraid to call the police about the battering because her violent husband is a cop is caught in a system of gender prejudice on the part of the police that may cost her her life. And if she instead kills her batterer in self-defense? And so the whole mess grows and morphs and drags us all down.

Mary calls the “whole mess” wickedness. “Evil and sin together may be called ‘wickedness,’ the complex condition of the lack of right relations in the world in which we live naturally, socially, and individually.”

America isn’t special in regard. This is the way people around the world fail one another and for people of faith, the way in which they fail God and God’s purpose for human life which is simply that we love one another and treat each other as we ourselves would wish to be treated. The details may change culture to culture, but the whole mess cannot be neatly sorted into “my oppression is worse than your oppression.” In fact, as I indicated above, the desire to rank one’s own perceived oppression as “the worst one” only serves to alienate and isolate people into opposing groups and contribute to the mess.

There is good news as well. Being able to see these larger social structures and examine where they come from is helpful in changing them. It isn’t “God’s will” that I as a woman I am treated like a second-class citizen. Some people benefit and benefit a lot when I don’t get paid as much as a man doing the same work. So, I can see that and through my work and the work of many others we can change these systems and become more decent to one another. I, as a white person, can see the system of racism and the harm it does to all of us, Americans of all races, because it tempts us to distrust and even fear. Men can and do work with women to create more equal and fair conditions in employment.

The first move, in breaking with these wicked systems, is not to play the game of “my oppression is worse than your oppression.” This is a version of “lets you and her fight.” I can tell you for a fact, it is never those who get suckered into this particular game who win. In fact, we all become losers.